Monthly Archives: July 2011

‘It’s only €2 per week.’ Minister for the Environment, Phil Hogan, was speaking on RTE’s Six One News on Tuesday about the new Household Tax which the Fine Gael/Labour Party Government had agreed at Cabinet earlier in the day. Then in that interview of a few minutes he repeated four more times, ‘It’s only €2 a week.’ Had Hamlet been listening, he might have declared, ‘The Minister doth protest too much.’

Following approaches from friends and family of Mr Brendan Lillis, a prisoner in Maghaberry prison, who is close to death, Socialist Party MEP for Dublin, Paul Murphy, is appealing to Northern Ireland Justice Minister, Mr David Ford, to intervene with a view to allowing Mr Lillis to spend his last weeks at home on humanitarian grounds.

Job growth has collapsed in the last two months, with the official US. unemployment rate rising to 9.2%. Since 2008 we have entered a period of high structural unemployment with the economy stagnating and unable to effectively pull out of the recession. Yet the politicians in Washington are not talking about jobs. Instead, they are playing a dangerous game of chicken with the August 2 deadline to raise the federal debt ceiling

As the sovereign debt crisis in Greece deepens, Andros Payiatsos, general secretary of Xekinima (the Socialist Party's sister section in Greece), spoke to the socialistparty.net (13 July) about its effects and what the way out is for workers and the majority in society.

Right wing extremist Anders Behring Brevik’s massacre of young people at the camping island of Utøya, outside Norway’s capital, Oslo, shocked and horrified people everywhere. It was an act of hardly imaginable wanton cruelty.

Ten years ago, on 21 July, 2001, as many as 300,000 workers and young people marched angrily through the streets of Genoa. It was the culmination of a week of protest against the G8 summit held in the city and presided over by George Bush. Their numbers had been swelled by outrage against the killing on the previous day of a young protester – Carlo Giuliano – in Alimonda Square by the forces of the Italian state. This demonstration was also attacked and broken up by police using tear-gas and wielding batons indiscriminately.

Socialist Party MEP Paul Murphy has dismissed Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s statement that the last minute deal struck in Berlin was “a good day for Ireland.” Instead, Mr Murphy said if the Taoiseach truly believed that, he had been taken for a ride.

In recent weeks and under much fanfare the government has launched a new scheme to create 5,000 internships by pairing applicants with a large number of participating companies, including KPMG, Tesco, Aer Lingus, Glanbia, Quinn Group Ltd, HP, ESB, Pricewaterhouse Coopers and Bord na Móna.